Bloom into EdTech: The Blog

If you are unfamiliar, Computer Science Education Week is December 9–15 this year, and is a week dedicated to getting students and teachers excited about coding. The Hour of Code is just one venue that you can participate in to get your feet wet coding with your students. If you have never participated in the Hour of Code before, I highly recommend you take a moment and jump on over to the FAQ section to learn more about the awesomeness, as well as to give it a try in your classroom yourself! Although you can technically host an Hour of Code anytime throughout the year, you may eventually want to do more in your classroom. CSEDWeek provides you with ways in which you can bring coding to your school. Regardless if you are a CS Teacher or a classroom teacher, teaching the fundamentals of computational thinking assists students with their critical thinking skills . Below is a brief list of some of my favorite tools. Code.org Price: Free | Privacy Policy | Ages: K-12 ...

I started off my career over 12 years ago teaching preschool children computer technology. I can tell you a lot has changed in terms of computer technology education. Preschoolers are typing... Preschoolers are creating..... Preschoolers are problem solving..... Preschoolers are troubleshooting.... Preschoolers are coding! Go beyond the Hour of Code and  make code apart of you curriculum.  I love to introduce code to my Preschool and Kindergarten students by teaching them the basic fundamentals of coding: following directions. I begin by explaining to the class that to begin, we are going to pretend that you are robots and I am going to code you! After all, coding is simply giving a set of commands that need to be followed. I made this very basic "Program a Preschooler/Kindergartner" Google Slide here  (and you can grab a copy here ) that I used to introduce simple sets of directions (or algorithms). There are several ways in which you can employ this a...

Are you ready? Are you excited?! It's here- The Hour of Code. Although coding should go way beyond the hour... please take this week to become acquainted with the plethora of Websites available to you to assist your students in learning how to code. Here is a Symbaloo Webmix of sites that I use with my students during the week: Happy Coding!